Las Gaviotas Set is a private home designed by BAK Arquitectos. It is located Las Gaviotas, Argentina. Photos by: Inés Tanoira
House in Bescanó / Josep Ferrando
© Pedro Pegenaute
- Architects: Josep Ferrando
- Location: 17162 Bescanó, Girona, Spain
- Architects In Charge: Josep Ferrando, Pere Joan Ravetllat, Carme Ribas
- Project Area: 400.0 m2
- Project Year: 2010
- Photographs: Pedro Pegenaute
- Constructor: Promonord 23 SA
- Technical Architect: Alfonso Villarreal
- Structural Engineer: NB-35 Barcelona
- Collaborators: Marc Nadal, Jordi Queralt, Xavi Cornejo, Ferran Laguna
- Client: Mike and Natalia
- Budget: 600.000 €
© Pedro Pegenaute
From the architect. The position of the house on a topographic gap generates different relationships with its immediate environment. On one hand, the treetops are at the height of a handrail, on the other, the network of branches is a filter through which the living room overlooks. The basalt roof frames and highlights in black the views that reach different depths of field offering a range of situations for the dweller.
© Pedro Pegenaute
Model
© Pedro Pegenaute
Model
At some points, the inclination of the slabs points towards the horizon to blend the skyline of the building with that of the mountains in the background. At others, the wavy ledge frames the domestic courtyard.
Plan
The proliferation of offset walls enhances diagonal relations between spaces. The extension of the walls and the roof slabs allows the design of the interior space to the outside, while trapping the framed landscape by creating lines that link the building to the site. Thus, the house appropriates the exterior space.
© Pedro Pegenaute
The Fragile Blessing
More than any generation before us, we have cause to be thankful, so thankful, on this Thanksgiving Day. Our harvests are bountiful, our factories flourish, our homes are safe, our defenses are secure. We live in peace. The good will of the world pours out for us.
When President Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed a troubled nation on Thanksgiving evening, 1963, just seven days after the assassination of JFK, he spoke in two very different tones. Passages such as the above were meant to reassure America that its blessings were fundamental and enduring; passages such as the one below, recalling Kennedy’s famous appeal for citizens who would ask what they could do for their country, were meant to warn that there was only one path forward:
Let all who speak and all who teach and all who preach and all who publish and all who broadcast and all who read or listen — let them reflect upon their responsibilities to bind our wounds, to heal our sores, to make our society well and whole for the tasks ahead of us.
Though Thanksgiving’s official status has been defined by presidential decree — George Washington first proclaimed it a holiday, and Abraham Lincoln tied it to the third Thursday in November — it was Norman Rockwell, says Deborah Solomon in her biography American Mirror, who put the stuffing in the modern Thanksgiving. He did so, says Solomon, not just in the iconic magazine covers but throughout his half-century career:
The great subject of his work was American life — not the frontier version, with its questing for freedom and romance, but a homelier version steeped in we-the-people, communitarian ideals of America’s founding in the eighteenth century. The people in his paintings are related less by blood than by their participation in the civic rituals, from voting on Election Day to sipping a soda at a drugstore counter. Doctors spend time with patients whether or not they have health insurance. Students appreciate their teachers and remember their birthdays. Citizens at town hall meetings stand up and speak their mind without getting booed or shouted down by gun-toting rageaholics. This is America before the fall, or at least before searing divisions in our government and general population shattered any semblance of national solidarity.
If the communitarian ideals proved shaky in the paintings, they were almost absent in the painter, says Solomon. Behind the tweeds-and-pipe persona, Rockwell felt “lonesome and loveless,” his relationships with his parents, wives, and children “uneasy, sometimes to the point of estrangement.” He did not care for church, and he “eschewed organized activity.” At age fifty-nine, after decades spent with “anxiety and fear of his anxiety,” Rockwell entered therapy with the famous German-born psychoanalyst Erik Erikson, who coined the term “identity crisis.”
Rockwell’s first Thanksgiving magazine cover appeared in 1913, but his most famous ones were painted at midcentury. The Unwinding, George Packer’s bestseller about the “Inner History of the New America,” takes the midcentury Rockwell Nation as its stepping-off point, the moment when “the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way”:
If you were born around 1960 or afterward, you have spent your adult life in the vertigo of that unwinding. You watched structures that had been in place before your birth collapse like pillars of salt across the vast visible landscape — the farms of the Carolina Piedmont, the factories of the Mahoning Valley, Florida subdivisions, California schools. And other things, harder to see but no less vital in supporting the order of everyday life, changed beyond recognition — ways and means in Washington caucus rooms, taboos on New York trading desks, manners and morals everywhere . . . The void was filled by the default force in American life, organized money.
But Packer’s case-study portraits of those denied “the Roosevelt Republic” — Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union Address inspired Rockwell’s Four Freedoms, his most famous series of paintings — are not sepia-toned. “The unwinding is nothing new,” he writes, and it “brings freedom, more than the world has ever granted, and to more kinds of people than before.” Cases in in point are provided by the households portrayed in Modern Families, which offers “Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship,” include a post-nuclear family of two adopted girls, one from Nepal and one from India, co-parented by two couples, one lesbian and one gay.
In his recent bestseller Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, J. D. Vance offers a more personal exploration of what happens when families fray and social capital is squandered, especially if exchanged for a materialist alternative. Vance’s memoir gives voice to a working class swept up in a downward-spiraling, lose-lose scenario in which families and communities are destroyed by the pursuit of an American Dream that, like Gatsby’s green light, only seems to recede.
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Algotec Offices / Setter Architects
© Uzi Porat
- Architects: Setter Architects
- Location: Ra’anana, Israel
- Architect In Charge: Shirli Zamir
- Area: 2.8 m2
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Uzi Porat
- Contractor: TIDHAR
- Project Manager: Margolin Bros. Engineering & Consulting Ltd.
© Uzi Porat
Algotec is a high-tech company engaged in information development and processing in the sphere of medical imaging. Its corporate offices are located in Ra'anana and extend over three floors. In the new interior planning, we linked all three floors with a private interior staircase, used solely by Algotec’s employees.
© Uzi Porat
During the design process, our planning ideas drew on the company’s content world – the human body and its components. The inspiration for the interior planning and design came from images of the human body’s elements, like cells, molecules, tissue, and the spinal column. Together, all these elements formed the basis for a unique design language that drew together the interior planning and design concepts.
© Uzi Porat
As the design team, our challenge was to use imaging from human anatomy and translate it into a fresh architectural vocabulary. We did this by processing anatomical images through filters of scale, materials, prints, and textures. The result was a distinctive design vocabulary that in turn generated a set of design ideas and solutions. Accordingly, the conference room is covered with a construction of wood strips simulating the layering of human tissue; the textures and graphics covering the partitions replicate cell patterns in large-scale; the wall coverings and floorings simulate the structure of the ribcage; and the suspended lighting fixtures are inspired by human tissue and cells.
© Uzi Porat
Assisted by that special vocabulary, all these imaging and design elements create a warm and inspiring workspace. It’s a ‘home’ that encourages shared productive efforts, and preserves the fine balance between closed private spaces and open spaces for social meetings and gatherings.
© Uzi Porat
North Carolinaphoto via jacki
Dengshikou Hutong Residence / B.L.U.E. Architecture Studio
© Ruijing Photo
- Architects: B.L.U.E. Architecture Studio
- Location: Dengshikou, DongDan, Dongcheng Qu, China, 100005
- Design Team: Shuhei Aoyama, Yoko Fujii, Lingzi Liu
- Area: 43.0 m2
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Ruijing Photo
© Ruijing Photo
From the architect. Located in a hutong near the historical centre in Beijing, the L-shaped house is sandwiched between the old hutong wall and a two floor building. The renovation aimed to transform the dated 43 m² residence into a convenient, functional modern living space for a family of six people .
Diagram
The first floor is consisted of a number of wooden boxes that functioned as living room, dining room, bedroom, study room and bathroom, creating a continuous open space that offers opportunities for communication between family members, at the same time ensuring each individual have a independent living space. The size of each box is decided according to the height of people’s activities in different functional areas. The open space on the 2nd floor is the kid’s bedroom and playground. SoJ materials such as rugs and nets are used in order to make sure the kid’s safety and also to create a warm and intimate atmosphere .
© Ruijing Photo
The shared corridor on one side of the house is not only connected to all the interior areas but also connected to outdoor public spaces, like a extension of the Hutong. With a long skylight that goes through the entire house, sufficient natural light streams in, creating a sense of being in the outdoor space. The facade facing the backyard is made of wooden frame and transparent glass, which can be opened as a huge door. Thus the interior living space and the backyard are bridged together, diffusing the boundary between the indoor and outdoor space.
© Ruijing Photo
Section
© Ruijing Photo
The design took the inspiration of public sharing spaces in traditional Beijing Hutong, conveys the vision that a home can be a open space as a part of the public urban spaces and what defines a home is the relationships of the people who live inside and the relationships between people and the environment.
© Ruijing Photo
Ground Floor Plan
© Ruijing Photo
Grafton Architect’s “Modern Day Machu Picchu” Wins Inaugural RIBA International Prize
© Iwan Baan
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) have revealed the Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología (UTEC), located in Lima and designed by Dublin-based practice Grafton Architects, as the winner of the inaugural RIBA International Prize. A longlist of thirty projects, published in May of this year, was narrowed down to six in October before a grand jury—chaired by Richard Rogers—selected the scheme as “an exceptional example of civil architecture.”
The project, which sits on the border of two residential districts in the Peruvian capital, perches on the edge of a natural inner-city ravine. It is conceived as a piece of geology, mirroring the organic curve of the landscape and accommodating itself in the city. “To its close neighbours,” the RIBA have suggested, it appears as “a series of landscaped terraces with clefts, overhangs and grottos – a modern day Machu Picchu.”
© Iwan Baan
Speaking about the building, the jury said:
Grafton Architects have created a new way to think about a university campus, with a distinctive ‘vertical campus’ structure responding to the temperate climatic conditions and referencing Peru’s terrain and heritage.
They continued: “UTEC has been designed to encourage its students to interact in a unique way with the building. The vertical structure provides open circulation and meeting spaces in a succession of platforms that compose the ‘frame’ of the building; teaching rooms, laboratories and offices are enclosed, inserted into and suspended from the exposed concrete structure. The frame is a device providing shade, a place of rich spatial exuberance and a platform from which to view the life of the city. The entire life of this vertical campus is on full display to the people of Lima.”
UTEC is the culmination of years of experimentation by Grafton Architects. In this building they show the mastery of their craft, gifting Lima with a bold yet considerate contribution to the city and a visionary, world-class building.
The campus building, designed in collaboration with Shell Arquitectos, is part of Lima’s specialist engineering university which was established to give young Peruvians access to qualifications, professional opportunities and to encourage social mobility.
© Iwan Baan
The grand jury included:
- Lord Rogers of Riverside (Chair)
- Billie Tsien, founding partner of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects | Partners based in New York City
- Kunlé Adeyemi, founder and principal of NLÉ
- Marilyn Jordan Taylor FAIA, the Dean of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Fine Arts
- Philip Gumuchdjian, founder of Gumuchdjian Architects and Chair of RIBA Awards
UTEC was selected as the winner of the 2016 RIBA International Prize from the following shortlisted entries:
- Arquipelago Contemporary Arts Centre / Menos é Mais, Arquitectos Associados with João Mendes Ribeiro Arquitecto, Lda
- Heydar Aliyev Centre / Zaha Hadid Architects with DiA Holding
- Museo Jumex / David Chipperfield Architects with Taller Abierto de Arquitectura y Urbanismo (TAAU)
- Stormen Concert Hall, Theatre and Public Library / DRDH Architects
- The Ring of Remembrance, International WWI Memorial of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette / Agence d’architecture Philippe Prost (AAPP)
Belgiumphoto via cindy
Photos from Canada
Architecture as it’s best… You’re looking at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto ! photo📸by: @torontobluejay thank you !! Follow us and use #travelcanada or tag @travelcanada_ on your best shots to get a chance to be featured. .
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#canada #explorecanada #longexposure #toronto #ontario #exploreontario #royalontariomuseum #museum #art #architecture #cityscape #night #photography #photographer #instagood #instadaily #viewsaddict #camerasnipers (à Royal Ontario Museum)
Waigaoqiao Cultural & Art Centre / Tianhua Architecture Planning & Engineering Ltd.
© Arch-Exist
- Architects: Tianhua Architecture Planning & Engineering Ltd.
- Location: Waigaoqiao New Town, Shanghai, China
- Conceptual Design: Huang Xiangming, Nie Xin, Xu Xiaojuan, Chen Haitao
- Schematic Design: Wu Xu, Chen Yang
- Area: 20740.0 m2
- Project Year: 2016
- Photographs: Arch-Exist
- Client: Shanghai Waigaoqiao New Town Development Management Co.,Ltd.
- Interior Design: Shanghai XianDai Architectural & Landscape Design Research Institute Co.,Ltd.
- Acoustics Consultant: Shanghai Acoustical Society
- Structural Design: Deng Zhiyong, Wang Xiangjie
- Mechanical And Electrical Design: Yu Hui, Zhao Xiangying, Yang Jun
- Site Area: 12,000 m2
- Green Ratio: 40%
© Arch-Exist
Shanghai Waigaoqiao Cultural & Art Centre is located on the E-03 Plot at the center of Waigaoqiao New Town, adjacent to North Zhangyang Road to its east, just 100 meters from Zhouhai Road to its north, near the Zhouhai Road station along the Metro Line 6.
© Arch-Exist
Tianhua Architecture Planning & Engineering Co,. Ltd. won the bidding for Shanghai Waigaoqiao Cultural & Art Centre in 2006, ushering in a new journey that would later last one decade.
1F plan
The authorities emphasizes in its master plan for the New Town that it expects the site to become a central business district with office blocks, hotels, business centres, conference centres and so forth.
© Arch-Exist
The project is expected to create a multi-purpose cultural and art centre to host literary and art performances, conferences, film screenings, art exhibitions, cultural, science education, reading and other public activities.
© Arch-Exist
Located near the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, the Centre is 6 kilometers away from the Waigaoqiao Port. Given that the Port is home to shipping containers, financial and trade businesses, the architects involved anticipate the Centre to become an extension of the global image of this area that mirrors its cultural life.
© Arch-Exist
The architects employed simple approaches to highlight the building’s characteristics under the geographic context. Based on the “container culture” typical of such ports, they created a juxtaposition of distinct volumes with glass and metal to enhance the visual effects while ensuring the building functions in an energy-efficient manner. Meanwhile a series of indoor and outdoor spaces are designed to prompt more public activities.
© Arch-Exist
The huge “box” for exhibitions is raised on other volumes to establish a dialogue with the outside world. Its exterior space enclosed by glass ribs provides views of its surroundings, such as the light rail trains in movement where passengers can also spot the box, getting first impression of the area.
© Arch-Exist
Section c-c
© Arch-Exist
The theatre is designed to mainly host literary and art performances and major conferences, occasionally film screenings.
© Arch-Exist
The second floor which is accessible from the square connecting the out-door stair , accommodates a children’s wonderland , a multi-media corner ，a reading room and a centre for the elderly. Space on this floor brings together the activities for both children and adults, and it’s featured by a huge bay window for the children’s wonderland there.
2F plan
The fifth floor is where spaces for entrepreneurs’ club, an exhibition hall，a wine bar and other training classrooms are located.
Exhibition. Image © Arch-Exist
5F Plan
platform on the 4th floor. Image © Arch-Exist
Construction on the Centre had to grind to a halt in 2009 for various reasons. No doubt it is an inspiration to the architects and the client that Waigaoqiao Cultural & Art Centre is eventually completed in 2016.
Urban Environment . Image © Arch-Exist
